Reliance Jio has been giving away 4G internet data at really low prices, but that is costing the customers now, according to a new report. A report by OpenSignal said that, Jio has the slowest 4G LTE average speed in India. However, Jio also provides the second best “average peak speed” in the country. OpenSignal is a London based internet company which studies and evaluates networks and their coverage. This recent report is based on a test between December 2016 and February 2017. The report says that Jio’s average 4G LTE speed is 3.9 Mbps, but its peak speed (network in best conditions) stood at 50 Mbps, which is 13 times more. Meanwhile, Bharti Airtel leads the list in terms of 4G speeds (both average and optimal). With the recent launch of the Jio Phone, it will be interesting to see what effect it will have on internet speeds when the network gets even more subscribers.
OpenSignal, in its report, said that the main reason for Reliance Jio’s performance was the volume of 4G data people have been consuming on its network. The report said that subscribers are not able to avail top peak speeds always but at times they “stumble onto an incredibly fast connection.” While Jio’s peak speed reached 50Mbps, Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea were able to reach peak speeds of 56.9Mbps, 36.5Mbps, and 29.8Mbps, respectively, OpenSignal said. The report said that there is a huge difference between Jio’s everyday speeds and its optimal speeds. This means that Jio is capable of a lot more, but due to the increased congestion, it is not able to reach such speeds, on average.
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The Internet speed by different telecom operators has been the source of debate and dispute among them over the past year. Earlier there have been multiple reports by other firms like Ookla too. OpenSignal’s report suggests that Vodafone and Idea offer twice as fast average LTE speeds than Jio and Airtel’s offering are nearly three times that by Jio. The report said that Jio’s networks are capable of supporting some incredibly fast LTE connections when conditions are ideal. But what our data reveals is that those ideal conditions were far more rare for Jio subscribers than for customers of the other operators.
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Kevin Fitchard from OpenSignal said, “Just as Bharti Airtel won OpenSignal’s fastest 4G speed award in our report, we measured faster-optimized speeds on Airtel’s networks than on the other three. Airtel’s average peak speed test was 56.6 Mbps, which is 5 times faster than its average 4G download test of 11.5 Mbps. When we look at Reliance Jio’s peak speed numbers, things really get interesting.” He added, “Even though Jio had the slowest average 4G speeds in our India report, in our peak speed comparison Jio’s average connection was second only to Airtel.”
